


Ladiesbingo Round 7

by Pingoodle (ThatAloneOne)



Series: Ladiesbingo [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-22 16:44:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21305294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/Pingoodle
Summary: Original short stories. Includes: lonely ghosts, reasons to own a horse in the apocalypse, platonic longing and decidedly not-platonic homemaking magic.
Series: Ladiesbingo [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1510676
Comments: 6
Kudos: 5
Collections: Ladies Bingo 2019





	1. stories for sleeping on

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes ghosts need to be read stories before they can sleep.

Mausoleums were always my least favourite kind of gravesite. The dead weren’t allowed to sleep beneath the earth. Instead, they were trapped in stone, here, with us. It was no wonder this place was so full of ghosts that the hairs on the back of my neck were making runs for it.  
  
My fingers were fumbling against the lock in the cold. The family had given me the key, but nobody had been into the mausoleum in an age so the lock was reluctant to open. I hoped the ghost inside was a little more accepting of change.  
  
I didn’t see anything when I opened the door. It wasn’t until I closed it that I saw her, forming as the cracks of moonlight coming through the door faded. Lace flickered at the ends of her dress, the clothes she was buried in trying to assert themselves. The look on her face told me that the lacy ends of her burial gown were the only parts of it that were going to get anywhere.  
  
I didn’t pretend I couldn’t see her, but I didn’t try to engage either. I set my bag on the bench, wrestled out my book, stored the key. All the while, the ghost watched me, hands fisted in the bell of her skirts.  
  
I started my book, sitting on the ground with my back against the bench. I’d learned it was better to have back support than pretend the social convention of not sitting on the floor was important to ghosts.  
  
Well. It didn’t tend to be important to the kind of ghosts I helped.  
  
I was on chapter three before she said, “This isn’t a very effective exorcism.”  
  
“Wasn’t supposed to be.” I closed the book on my thumb, staring up at her. Now that my eyes had adjusted to the dark and the not-real, I could see her a lot more clearly. The faintest hint of fur was wrapped around her shoulders to protect against whatever cold the not-real held. “I like your stole. Is it mink?”  
  
She only stared. I let her. I knew what I looked like these days, even in the not-real. Not-short but not-tall, friendship bracelets and the ghosts of them from my sisters wringing my wrists and enough hair to qualify me as a fourteenth-century princess. My sweater was old and well-loved enough I was probably also wearing it in the not-real, but it was hard to be sure.  
  
Another moment passed. I opened my book again.  
  
This time, I only made it a few pages before she interrupted. Clara Patrick’s skirts fanned out in front of me, the lace banished to folds and shadows. “Why are you here?”  
  
I angled the cover of my book toward her. It was one of my newer ones, two laughing girls pressed against paper in matte colour. “Reading.”  
  
“Here?”  
  
“Sorry, were you busy?”  
  
Clara’s hand was a whisper of cold wind over mine. I let her move my fingers away from the cover, the author, the pitches from other popular authors. The corners of her eyes were crows-foot lined against the smooth youth of her cheeks, her eyes squinting at the dark as she did her best to read upside down. “Haven’t heard of any of those.”  
  
My smile was crooked. “I’m shocked.” I let the book go, Clara half-catching it, the gravity allowing the not-real a partial victory. “Did you want-?”  
  
Clara let it fall the rest of the way to the ground. I would have winced if I hadn’t been sitting already. The worst it would get was dusty and well, that was just what it was like for books around me. “Not your thing?”  
  
“Why are you here?” This time, Clara sounded almost angry.  
  
I breathed the still air of the mausoleum. She had been resting here long enough, and the place built well enough, that all I smelled was dust and old leaves from a decade ago. “Sleepless nights, you know.” Slowly, I picked up the book. Clara watched me brush it off and set it on top of my bag. “Don’t you want to sleep, sometimes?”  
  
Lace flashed against her skirt, the white tangles climbing almost to her knees. Clara leaned back, the smiles around her eyes vanishing. “No.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Would you, knowing that was roaring out there?” She gestured at the walls of her resting place, what might have once been an engagement ring flashing. “I hear it. I hear echoes. I hear them crying when they pass by. You think I can sleep?”  
  
“I know.” I shifted on the cold marble, trying to match the engravings at my back with the thicker parts of my sweater. “I’m the same half these days. Shouldn’t I be doing more?”  
  
The lace, which had been slowly retreating, started its climb again. “Shouldn’t you?” Clara challenged. “Spend your time better?”  
  
Really, if she wanted me gone, she’d have to be more direct about it. I smiled at her in the most annoying way I could. I had a lot of little siblings. It was pretty good. “Just reading.”  
  
Clara stared. Slowly, the lace retreated. I could see the detailing in her dress now, the soft ribbing of the cotton against the deep green.  
  
I went back to reading.  
  
“What’s it about?” Clara said, finally. When I looked up, it was just her, the age and the smiles back around her eyes, the lace so far gone I couldn’t see even a trace.  
  
“Oh, it’s lovely.” I turned the back to her this time, let her squint at whatever nonsense the marketing team had slapped the book with. “I mean, that’s not a good explanation. It’s more like-” 

* * *

When dawn broke and I locked up the mausoleum behind me, I was stiff all over and more than ready to get some sleep but… Happy. I think.

It was always easier to explain it without explaining it. To come by again and again. Maybe to wake some of the more settled ones nearby, let them wrap each other in not-real but no less cozy hugs. I didn’t mind reading the ghosts to sleep, sometimes. They appreciated it a lot more than my nieces did, and the good thing about adults is that they got the point a lot quicker than kids did.

The thing is about sleeping is that it means waking up again. And people _needed_ sleep, no matter how old they were. Sleep, to heal. To understand themselves. To dream of what the world could look like, if it was better.

The world needed more of us well rested. I was happy to help, any way I could.


	2. the future of communism

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Horse girl meets apocalypse and reflects on communism.

I’d been lucky. I’d still been on horseback when the first one showed up. I’d been over the fence of the arena and clattering down the road home while the rest of my class got their throats torn out.

Bessie lived in my living room now. It wasn’t much of a stable compared to what she’d been used to, but she didn’t seem to mind it. I minded trying to scrub the dung stains off the hardwood floors but, well. We were both alive. That was worth all the rest of the — no pun intended — shit I had to deal with.

It was pretty wild how fast things had changed. One zombie, two zombie, three zombie, apocalypse. If Josie down the street didn’t have such a big greenhouse, I didn’t know where I’d be.

Even that greenhouse couldn’t support a horse, though. Which meant it was time to get the tractor and get moving before the seasons decided on changing.

Bessie tried to shove her nose in my pocket as I left, looking for sugar cubes or carrots or who knows what. I let her. Eventually, she withdrew and blew a big, disappointed horsey breath all over me. Her big brown eyes were accusatory, like I hadn’t given her my only precious apple yesterday. The things didn’t grow on trees.

Well. Not anymore they didn’t.

“Don’t throw any parties while I’m gone,” I told her. Then I kissed her nose and jangled out the door, my keys clacking against my chainmail breastplate.

* * *

Josie had been the one to acquire the tractor, and though she liked to spin a real yarn about it, it had been easier than she expected.Zombies were more of a danger in population-dense areas than they were elsewhere, and old Anthony’s tractor depot hadn’t exactly been hopping even on the best of days. We each got a key to it, and a strict instruction to not fuck around or waste all the ethanol because _some_ people still wanted to get drunk on it instead of using it for fuel and in communism we had to think of all of us and not just ourselves.

Apocalyptic communism was better than capitalism, mostly. In my opinion the solution should have been “more stills, and maybe don’t drink ethanol in a post-healthcare world” but I wasn’t the one in charge.

Right. Out to the fields it was. Talk communism with Josie over tea later.

There were what used to be a few hay fields a couple dozen miles out. It was too far out for most of us to bother, but I had a horse and most others didn’t. The hay was bolled up in those giant snail-shell stacks, and it would stay that way until the winter came and it rotted. My goal here was to let as little rot as possible. It did me better as fodder for Bessie than it would do anyone as a big pile of sludge.

The first one rolled onto the back pretty easy, which was nice of it. Only about an eighth of it shed off in big flakes, which I didn’t bother to pick up. The tractor trundled over to a second, which decided it was time to throw a fit and shatter, and then a third, which grudgingly agreed it would do a good job as horse feed.

I was thinking about going for a fourth roll of hay when I heard it. Well. Heard and felt it. The grass snakes started writhing past my feet, hissing close-to-imperceptibly quiet.

Fuck.

I threw the half-handful of hay I was holding onto the back of the tractor carriage and started shuffling at top speed for the tractor’s cabin. I couldn’t bear to step on a poor snake and that was gonna kill me some day but all you had in the apocalypse was communism and morals and I wasn’t going to give either of those up.

I saw the zombie as I hauled myself into the chair, which had the dual effect of making me scream and also making my foot on the gas go from “thinking about it” to “split-second NASCAR”. I almost punched out my ribcage on the steering wheel, which was a good thing, cause the zombie tried to reach for me. It reeled back, baffled at being foiled, and the tractor’s engine remembered that “go” was an ongoing thing.

I gave my tits a quick pat down to see if anything was badly hurt, but no. Just the adrenaline. The tractor hummed beneath me, and I patted it too. The zombie was slowly receding in the mirror. The tractor had about a horse power of one — which if I compared to Bessie was a generous assumption — but that was more than enough to beat a corpse on wheels.

Well. At least I had the hay. Hopefully someone would be waiting at the corner to take out my hanger-on before it got ideas like eating my horse. Bless Josie and her apples and her tractor and fuckin’ bless communism.


	3. till the sun comes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who's life are you allowed to beg Death for?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For Lanie.
> 
> Also warning: death.

The thing I was most scared of was finding she was in Elysium.

I wanted her back. Gods, I wanted her back more than anything. Early night to morning light I’d walked and walked to find this place. I wasn’t Orpheus or anything close. I wasn’t Hermes, or godlike, or really worth anything at all. I was just so fucking lonely here in the dark and ready to beg at the knees of whatever god waited beyond.

The graveyard at the crossroads loomed. Close. I kept walking, the length of a city block or so made meaningless against the fields. Wheat shushed itself in the light morning wind, casting moon-shadows across my feet. At the side of the road at nowhere, where I’d sent that first message to the other half of my soul, I knelt.

Had it been a thousand years earlier or more, I might have brought a sow with me to the roadside, or a sheep, or some meaningful sacrifice of life and riches. Here and now, I scattered painstakingly collected wild grass seeds under the fence and in the ditch, brushing the last few off my palms into the opaque water of a puddle. When life had bloomed so well, it was meaningful to cut that life short. With asphalt beside me and a monoculture behind me, this was the sort of thing that pleased the gods more.

At least, I hoped.

And I hoped she wasn’t happy down there, as awful as that was. I wanted her to want to come home.

“Please,” I told the seeds floating in the puddle. My hands were shaking as they lay across my knees. “I need her.”

I closed my eyes. They burned with things unshed, though I hadn’t the will to drink in days.

The wind and the chain-link fence spoke. First in growls and then in words and then in flashes against the lids of my tear-closed eyes. “Who are you to her? Her lover?”

“No.”

The darkness scowled at me until I opened my eyes to see it properly. The god of underground things watched me from the dim nowhere, unimpressed. “Her sister?”

“No.”

He laughed, now, the guardian of the gates of the dead. I swore I could see a flicker of Cerebus behind him, a ghost of a dog with heads blurring apart as he turned to stare right at me. “A cousin, even?”

“No.”

“What are you, then?”

“I’m her friend.”

“Oh really? A friend? How kind of you to make the journey. Go home to your other friends, then.”

“I love her. I need her. It doesn’t matter how.”

Death purred a laugh. “Need her, really? Tell me how.”

I tried to speak but the words all caught in my throat. I scooped the tears from my cheeks, more salt than water, and held out my trembling hands over the puddle that had brought the god here. I stared at him and I let myself shake and bleed at all the seams. In the puddle, my tears shone like an oil slick.

This time, he didn’t sound nearly so grating. He sounded tired more than anything, like even spending time in the deadest of human place could drain him of all the things that made him un-alive. “You know the terms.”

I scraped the tears from my eyes with the palms of my hands, gravel biting into my cheeks. My legs were numb and I didn’t know if they could hold me but they were going to have to. “Yes.”

“Go, then,” the god of mercy said.

I stood, eyes still closed. When I opened them, turned away to stare up at the full moon, I didn’t see a shadow laid before me where her shadow should have been. Could have been. The crickets sang and chattered, and the wheat whispered at me that I’d made a mistake. None of it mattered.

I started walking.


	4. Sunshine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To build a home, you have to keep repeating your love.

There usually wasn't much to sweep up, since both Ash and I were happy to stay homebodies all day. When we remembered to keep our shoes by the door, I only had to clean away flour and sugar and the occasional fallen hair.

I tipped most of the dirt pan into the compost. The parts that were us, I saved. I twined a strand of her hair around the curtain ring and watched it shine gold in the sunlight. Dawn was breaking over my shoulders, the light pressing against my bare skin with a physical weight.

It was easy and it wasn’t, to make a home yours. To protect it, to bring the threshold to bear. I yawned at the window, scrubbing at my eyes, only half-watching the hair flare into a stripe of brilliance in the curtains.

* * *

“Lou,” Ash said thoughtfully over dinner the next day, “d’you think it’d be homier here if I-”

“Yes,” I said, because encouraging her bad ideas was my favourite thing. “Do it.”

“A thousand cactuses?” she said innocently. “You’re on board for the mortgage then?”

I leant across the table to grab her hands in mine. Only a few of our knuckles got pasta sauce on them, which was close enough to a success. “Anything. Cover me in spikes. Carpet the place in one-bloom flowers.”

Ash’s fingers tightened against mine. “Right,” she said. She swallowed. “I’ll. Get one. See how it goes. Or maybe sage?”

I kissed our hands, smelling the pepper and tomato of the sauce she always complained was too bland. “If you think so. Maybe basil, too, while you’re at it. Get the whole front window going with spices.”

“Right,” Ash said again. She sounded a little more sure this time. “If you’re trying to make a statement about flavour palettes, I’m missing it, just so you know.”

“Oh, I know.” I let her hands go so she could start complaining about the spaghetti. I grinned at her. “To be fair, I don’t know either.”

“Wonderful. We’re going to poison ourselves off fancy leaves and it’ll be your fault.”

I pointed my fork at her, a few specks of tomato scattering across the floorboards in golden sparks. “_Our_ fault,” I promised.

* * *

Ash spent a weekend tracking mud through the house, working it into the edges of carpets and leaving shining home-gold tracks from the front door to the back. The sky rained on her like it was trying to make a point and I left her hot cider to counter it. She would work herself to the bone sometimes, and it was better to let her. I loved her, but I understood her more than anything else.

When it was done, when the slender oaks shadowed our windows and whispered lullabies at night, Ash slept through till it stopped raining. I teased her and I sat on her under a pile of blankets and pretended it was an accident and made a nuisance of myself so she knew I was still there.

When she surfaced from our bed, eventually, it was only so she could drag me into it.

* * *

Some days I had to spend the morning catching up on our dishes. This time they'd been piling up for long enough that even I’d noticed it was time to stop neglecting them. Easier to make a morning out of it than to keep seeing the pile stare at me, really. I stood at the sink and scrubbed and rinsed and washed and soaked warmth into my hands.

I could see Ash trying to stare down a blade of grass on the overgrown lawn outside, her hands cupped around it, her forehead wrinkled as our dresses. She might have known I was watching, but it didn’t change the way she stuck her tongue out to lick the grass or the face she made after, sneezing.

I kissed my thumb and pressed a smudge over her face into the window. Ash, redolent in the warm sun and cool earth, rolled over to contemplate a flower instead.

* * *

I had Ash pressed against the counter, a change of pace seemed delighted by. She was laughing at how I’d tried to seduce her, not unkindly. “I could eat you up,” she repeated, making to nip at my jaw and catching hair instead. “Oh, how delicious I’m sure we are.”

“_Hush_.” I tried to make good on my threat, pressing my lips to the thread of pulse under her jaw. Her skin tasted like soap, and I had to laugh and try to scrub my tongue against the collar of her shirt, dust and cotton overwhelming the sour false-mint. Her hands carded through my hair, attempting to find the ends of it and pull it out of the way. “You make it look easy, alright?”

“Easy? You?” Ash purred, and I really did bite her this time, careful to keep my tongue away from her skin. “Oh, don’t give me that. You handed it to me.”

“Hand?” I said. “Oh. Of course.”

There wasn’t much talk after that. The counter was kind enough not to give either of us a splinter, though by all rights we deserved a few. Later, in the buttery sunset, I wound a strand of my hair around the head of our bed. Ash complained at the movement, but settled once I’d curled back into her, our hair a tangled mess of brown and gold across the pillow.

* * *

The threshold settled on a Thursday with Ash’s boots cast lopsided across mine. I fell off the sofa with it, the sudden weight of _home_ and contentment and happiness and the lustre of lovenearly too much to bear. Ash swept me up and around in a circle, pressing a kiss to me temple and then to the pine of our doorframe. “We did it,” she told me, like she thought it couldn’t possibly be true.

I kissed her like a thousand words, her mouth hot against mine. We swayed on our threshold, holding each other, for a long time. The light filtered to gold, bright enough that even with my eyes closed I could see us glowing.


End file.
